Bolt Riley: A Reggae Adventure – Preview

We got the opportunity to test an early Alpha build of Bolt Riley. As this is still an Alpha build, we’re bound to expect bugs, crashes or ‘what-the-hell-I’m-stuck’-moments. The developers tried to anticipate by warning the gamers, using quite an amusing note. We also learned that they are going to change quite a lot, like the puzzles, animations and the characters. Voice overs and extra music will be added as well. Although there are going to change quite some things, we’re going to give you a little sample of the game.

Bolt Riley: a Reggae Adventure is a point and click puzzle game which is made possible by The Adventure Mob team.

You start the game with a small tutorial to give you more information about the several actions that are available. The main aspect is that you click on an object to get information and then you can click it again to pick it up or to do something with it. You can see which items are clickable by the small pop-up text in the corner of the screen. Next to the pointing and clicking, you can also earn or find muses or inspirations to learn new songs and perform great on the stage. The tutorial also covers the mechanics of the conversations. There’s only 1 preset ‘right’ answer in this alpha build. It would have been nice if the developers implemented the other answers as well, because it would give a more reliable vision of the game. The characters just have one ‘return-back’ sentence when you pick the wrong answer because they give you a response and send you back to the previous choices so you can try again. This gives you the feeling that you can just guess and hope that you’ll have the right answer.

There was a bit of normal gameplay available as well, although we have to keep in mind that the developers are still changing quite some elements in the game. I tried to play the game as long as I could but the alpha build didn’t have a save option yet. You can walk around by clicking on the screen and you can talk to people by selecting them. As you start the game, you got some restrictions by an evil bully. You’ll have to think about how to solve the problem and get back to your band.

In one of the trailers they mentioned that there was a puzzle in which you have to put some ‘medicinal herbs’ between the hinges of your microphone so it would stay put. This notion was scrapped due to the inappropriate setting of the subject. Although I would say the same, the setting of the game gives you room to make such references or jokes. The developers countered this great by changes the weed by gum paste. Gum is way more plausible anyway.

The music in the background sets the bar just right as the game all revolves around music and bands. Bolt Riley has narrations as well but they aren’t available for whole the game. The graphics are in a quite typical style which some of us might appreciate and others might not. The cutscenes were decent though and really fit the game.

Bolt Riley: a Reggae Adventure is in its alpha build but from what I’ve seen, I’m looking forward to finishing the puzzles and seeing how Bolt got into reggae.